10 Years of ReadWriteThink

In 2012, ReadWriteThink.org celebrated 10 years of supporting educators and providing resources to teachers, parents, and students. And we're proud to say that 2012 was our best year ever, shattering the 18 million visits mark!

ReadWriteThink.org keeps getting bigger and better, and as new theory and technology arise in the world of literacy education, we grow and change and adapt so that we can provide innovative materials and resources to the teachers and students who need them most.

We expanded on the number of student interactives that feature our work saver program, and massively updated and improved upon some of our most popular interactives, the Cube Creator, Trading Card Creator, and Printing Press.

Our largest project in 2012, by far, was the release of our first education apps for iPad tablet devices, our Trading Card and Word Mover mobile apps. These two were our pioneer projects into mobile technology, and by no means our last offerings in this realm.

This past year was a challenge, but a fun one for us at ReadWriteThink.org, and our success and popularity has us excited for opportunities in 2013. We'd like to thank you, our users, for making the site so widely used and so well loved. We couldn't have done it without you, and as always, your comments and feedback are appreciated.

Thanks for a great 2012!

-The RWT Team

Last Post for the Year

Today is my last day in the office for the year, and I'm getting out early!

It's a busy day, and I have a few announcements to make because we had a bunch of projects wrap up recently.

I mentioned in the last post that I'd have something fun and cool to show off. Turns out I have a couple.  First is a quick video about our Trading Card app:

I hope that works, embedded in there like that. Seems like it should.

Second, Printing Press is now live and looks awesome! That was a big project for Lisa and Christy, and they  really knocked it out of the park. Maybe next post I'll make part of the post in the printing press and paste it up here. I should have done that with this post. Alas, my creativity comes to me too late!

I've talked about one of the projects for next year being a potential mobile-friendly version of ReadWriteThink. We made a survey about what our users want to see on such a site, and we've just pushed it live. Please take a moment to answer the questions and help us make the best possible site we can for our tablet, smart phone, and mobile device users. Which can include the students, if we see that that is the trend among the responders.

That's it for me for 2012! Catch you in the new year. Have a safe and happy holiday session.

Wes

Not a Millionaire

Despite a weekend Vegas and $550 million dollar lottery, I am not a millionaire. Ah well, maybe next time.

So what am I going to talk about this week?

I'm at a loss, actually. I've had a catch-up week, coming back from a trip to Vegas (productive and fun!) and then a major US holiday last week. I spent the beginning of November prepping for the NCTE convention and the Doug Buehl webinar (which went extremely well--we have the archive up for free is you missed it). I came back and am kind of in a holding pattern. I'm waiting for Venn Diagram and the Android version of Trading Cards to be available for testing. I've been doing a lot of small, uninteresting-to-write-about job maintenance projects: follow-up on emails, researching traffic projections, designing banners for the homepage.


That last one is a new thing for me--my coworker Becky usually handles that for the IRA side, along with Christy on the NCTE side. But alas, Becky is no longer in the office having given birth to her third child this past weekend.

The last few weeks have been kind of boring for me, I guess! So let's look ahead: What does December have in store for the RWT team?

The already mentioned testing of apps is a big one. We have a 2013 work plan to draft out (which will give me more to talk about as we figure out what we are looking to do in 2013). The survey for the mobile site should be out next month as well.

One of my goals in December is to get out in to our social media platter and figure out how we can be more interactive with users. Fix up the areas that we aren't really representing ourselves. We have a Pinterest account, for instance, and I've not really familiarized myself with using Pinterest.

I know one area we will be adding something in the next couple weeks is YouTube. But I'll save that post for next time, when I have something to show you rather than just talk about. The showing is important for this one.

Wes

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

Guess what the topic of this post is about?

"Gee, maybe how you can't even keep up with an every-other-week posting schedule?"

....... No.

"Really, Wes? Really?"

...... Sorry.

It's about mobile technology!

First, I'm going to wow you with a couple links to a couple blog posts that are all kinds of awesome. A huge Thank You to Julie Ramsay who featured the Trading Card app as part of her post in her blog over the weekend. And even bigger THANK YOU (yes, I actually made it bigger) to her students, who used the Trading Card app in class and then posted about it in their class blog! They included their samples, which was really awesome, being able to see students using something I worked on.

Second, the Android version is nearly in our hands for testing. I'm going to guess that is still a couple weeks at least before it is downloadable.

Third, Word Mover went through beta with flying colors and is well on its way to being out there. I did a poem or two for testing. I suppose I can share one of the masterpieces.

The assignment was to right a poem about a book. I picked my favorite, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Does it make sense even if you've read the book Neverwhere? Maybe. But it was a fun exercise, using the limited words to try to write about the book!

Fourth, RedWriteThink is investigating making a mobile site, an abbreviated, mobile-optimized version to make browsing on a phone or tablet much easier, faster, and cheaper on your data plan. This idea is only just being to be floated around the ground, and we have a lot of research to do about what sort of content to put on it, how will it look, and even is this something teachers want?

Which is why I'm writing about it here--is this something you might want? Do you browse for lessons and classroom ideas on a mobile device? Would you if it was made easier and faster? Or is this something that will likely remain a desktop job for a while longer and making new apps and interactives would be a better use of our time?

We want to know what you want! How else would we know what to get you?*

Fifth, I have another 5k run coming up this weekend. I did one earlier in the month, and am looking to beat my previous time (and this time I'm running with friends; the hope is to beat all of them, too!). It's also a costume run. Fun fun! I'll update next time with pictures from that.

Wes

*This argument never flies with my wife when it is gift-giving time. She insists that I should be able to figure something out on my own. Apparently the surprise is part of the fun. I'd rather know I was getting something I wanted than be surprised by something I didn't.

Hello, October

First, I need to say PUMPKIN!

It's my favorite flavor. I particularly love pumpkin-flavored coffee or coffee creamer. I drink much more coffee this time of year not because of the temperature, but the flavor. Love it!

And now to ReadWriteThink-related topics.

The Android version of the Trading Card app is still in the works--I received a couple emails about that previously, and if I told you that it would be out by the end of September, I apologize. I think we will be closer to mid-October. Sorry. At least we have pumpkin-flavored coffee to hold us over, right?

Word Mover has moved to beta testing, so that is crushing right along. I'll share another Wes original with you after I do my test run.

I will down at the Diamond State Reading Association (DSRA) meeting tomorrow in Dover, DE. They are one of IRA's affiliate councils. This gives a chance to interact face-to-face with teachers and talk about ReadWriteThink.

And speaking of face-to-face, last week...no, two weeks ago...the editors of RWT had one of our face-to-face meetings between the NCTE team and the IRA team. I always love our in-person team meetings. I feel like it fosters a better work environment and improves communication. It's always fun, and I do enjoy getting to see Lisa and Christy and to catch up.

We went over site traffic (up 16% overall!) and where RWT is getting hit, what the trends show as areas to improve. We've come up with some interesting ideas for future fixes. We plan on revamping some older lessons, and we'll of course keep fixing the old interactives (Venn Diagram is already in the works).

The Professional Development side received a lot of traffic this year, which we like to see. We're now discussing how best to improve this section: what's work? What isn't? What's there that shouldn't be? What are teachers looking for when they go to that page?

If you've gone to the Profession Development section of ReadWriteThink, what did you think? Did you find what you were looking for? If you have any thoughts on what RWT can and should be providing, let us know!

More big things to come as we design the work plan for 2013. I'll keep listing out the cool things as they come up. It's an exciting time of year.

Because pumpkin flavor is back in season!

Wes

We Have an App!

I shall keep this one short and sweet. Or perhaps it is sweet because it is short?

I'm thinking of the Muppet's Christmas Carol when Fozzywigg makes his Christmas speech and Statler and Waldorf (as Jacob and Robert Marley) heckle him "That's it?" "It was dumb!" "It was pointless!" "It was obvious!" "It was...short...." "We LOVED it!"

<crickets>

No? Just me? Okaaaaay, moving on.

We have an app! We aren't officially marketing it yet, and we've only had one successful download from the iTunes store as far as I know. So here it is, another Wes-is-posting-something-without-clearing-it-first exclusive: the Trading Card App in iTunes!

Hope you like it!

Even more, I hope you can download and install it....

And for all the Android OS users out there, we have the Android version in the works, and we hope to be testing it soon, and have it released at the end of the month. We might need some beta testers for that...any volunteers?

Wes

Showing Off the Apps

Every other week at least? Really, Wes? Really? (My coworkers will get that joke....)

Yeah, it seems that the blog I had planned to write last week should have been written and posted last week to keep up with my goal of posting AT LEAST every other week.

Alas, alack!

I'll make up for it this week with pretty pictures and cool announcements.

Announcement 1: Trading Cards: The App is going live for iPads! The exact date is not known, but I am submitting the interactive to iTunes today for review. We're guessing it should be up and out there for download in a couple weeks <fingers crossed>.

And now for a pretty picture:

Sample of the Trading Card App printout

This is a final print out of a Fictional Person card from our interactive. I made this during testing, so it is a bit quick and dirty, but I thought it was pretty cool, so I decided to use it here.

The App allows used to add in their own pictures to the top area--I grabbed this one online. I believe it was one of the promotional posters for the movie Sucker Punch.

Note that me mentioning this movie here in how way reflects ReadWriteThink's view of the movie nor the views of any of the other editors or our parent organizations. I thought the movie was AMAZING! I was expecting a shallow, action-packed thrill-ride and found something that blew my mind. Haunted me for days! I'm not going in to any of my theories here in this post, but I did enjoy the movie so much that I made a couple cards based on the it, hence the Rocket card you see.

The App also allows for users to pick from a variety of styles for the card. I liked this one for Rocket because it is less stylized--which leans more focus on to action-packed image!--and does have a little softness and femininity in the way the purple fades, but is still a bold and vibrant color.

OK, that is image and announcement 1. Onto number 2.

RWT's second app, spear-headed by the NCTE team, was released to us last week for our first round of testing and it wicked cool! It is based on our Word Movie interactive but goes well beyond that in functionality and shear awesome. Similar to the interactive, you have a passage from a famous work from which you can select words to make into found poetry.

Unlike the interactive, it looks sleek, makes the words from the passage look like magnetic poetry strips, and has text from a few famous works preloaded, and has a large word bank that can be used instead of famous works. Users can also add their own words in case they have a particular list they need/want to use.

I have absolutely and totally NO permission from the NCTE team to post this picture, so I hope they won't get mad at me for doing so, but the initial testing  went so well and the app looks great; I wanted to show it off.

I call this poem Play on Words. Get it?

I didn't do much of a poem; some of my other works were longer. You can see the word bank is on the bottom, pops up and down into the work space. There are different background options as well. The words can be resized (I made them large since I was only using 2), rotated, and colored. The fonts can also be switched. Lots of options.

Again, this is alpha build stuff here, so things might change before it is finished and released.

For next time, maybe I'll see if Lisa or Christy want to chat about the latest interactive they have been working on, a redesign of the Print Press.We were testing that recently, too, and I'm excited to have that one released on the site. Very useful, very full-featured, and it looks great! I think the final release is scheduled for early September--but if I can get either of them to take a turn at posting here, they can probably give an actual date.

That's it for now. I'm out!

Wes

Venn Diagram Away!

I expected the Venn diagram app/interactive specs to be easy. I expected a quick write up, a few pages, and fairly simplistic functionality.

I was wrong.

Part of my wrongness was an unexpected functionality Becky and I came up with in a meeting--one which we don't even know is possible, but will be pretty cool if it is. I go in to details in case it isn't possible--cause then it's just a huge let down! I'll let you know what the designers say.

The first round of beta testing for the Card Creator app has come and gone. Many thanks to our testers for all their hard work. The feedback was helpful and informative. We're waiting on all the changes from that round of testing to come back in--and then we'll send it out for another round to make sure the changes work.

And then...we'll be done!

I think the most dramatic change to the app is the switch of one of the cards. Upon tester feedback, we removed the Abstract Concept card and added in a Vocabulary Word card. While it is still available I should write up a card for Disappointment and use that change as an example.

Don't get me wrong--I agree with the change. Abstract Concept was a difficult card from the beginning. It is tough to write guiding questions to help a student fill in a card about a concept. It's so...conceptual!

But I liked the idea behind it. Not only getting students to think about concepts such as honor or love or fear, but to guide them to create these cards by helping them deeply analyze the concept. I also really liked the idea of a collection that might comprise Katniss (fictional person), Peta (fictional person), Bow (object), District 12 (fictional place), The Reaping (event), and Courage (Abstract concept)--the idea of having a card to reflect the important aspects of a character was appealing to me.

Alas, it is not to be.

The Vocab Card works so much better. The questions were tough, but the end result is much smoother, and we think more useful. I came up with a couple fun group activities for students even as we brainstormed the questions. No doubt teachers will come up with many more. And eventually we'll have a lesson or two that use the Vocab Card.

I think it was a good decision. I just will miss the Abstract Concept card.

I did spend a lot of time working on the questions for it.

Wes

After Trading Cards: What's Next for Wes?

Summer, you move too fast! Already 18 days into June? When did that happen?

Probably in the last two weeks....

During which we finally wrapped up Trading Card Creator! This new interactive was pushed live last week, and we even included a sample card collection to show teachers how this might be used in class. (Click Save As and save the .rwt file down to your computer, then start the Trading Card interactive, click the Open tab at the top right, and open that .rwt file: instant Wes-created Shakespeare collection!)

This post will be the last time I'm going to mention Trading Card. For a few weeks, anyway.

Why for a few weeks? Because we're only mostly done with it. Not only is the online interactive version getting a Create Your Own Card feature (just like the Create Your Own Cube in the Cube Creator), which is not yet implemented, but we are still working on the tablet app version of the Trading Cards, and that's going in to beta testing in the next few weeks.

Exciting--and mystifying. App development is not easy work, and I am very thankful to have a great team to work with throughout the process.

So now what? What's next after Trading Cards (beyond more Trading Cards, that is)?

I've been looking at some of our interactive traffic to see which interactives are used, but I also looked at which interactives are just...old and "dingy" and in need of repair. After all, just because there is little traffic  to an interactive does not mean that interactive is bad or  not useful--it just might not be useful in that form. It might not be appealing or intuitive or catchy.

So right now, I have my eye on Venn Diagram. I have always felt this was a great interactive--a useful one!--that suffers in delivery (there are separate interactives for the 2- and 3-circle diagrams, for instance) and design. We can make this better. It's a great tool for literature. For math. For science. For every subject.

And I think we can update it quickly, easily, and as both an interactive and an app. So that's one thing on Wes's plate currently (and there are many more, but most of those projects aren't as interesting so I don't talk about them here).

But that's already in the works; that's Wes's after Trading Cards. What is Wes's after Venn Diagrams?

Maybe you should tell me.

We have 59 student interactives on ReadWriteThink.org. Fourteen of them are updated or completely new in the past couple years. Printing Press, Comic Creator, Word Mover, and the Venn Diagram are already in some way in the works (if you want to give feedback as we start planning the new Comic Creator, we are open to it).

So what I want to know is, what interactive do you use? Is it fine as is, or should we be looking to update it? Does the work saver functionality make sense for that interactive?s What do you or your students/kids really like about that interactive? What can be improved?

The better feedback we get, the more we can do to improve ReadWriteThink.org's offerings and to get you the tools and resources you want!

Wes

It's been crazy around here!

It's been Trading Cards, Trading Cards, Trading cards all the time around here! This last week has been a flood of writing and rewriting the guiding questions for the trading card interactive. I've taken several stabs to start us off, and the team has been very good at trimming the questions down. I tend to be verbose--it's my curse. As an editor, I'm pretty good at trimming stuff down to concise phrasing (though, admittedly, not as good as Becky!), but as a writer I am very long-winded.

"We know, Wes. We've seen it on your blog."

Ah, yes. First hand experience. Well...let us continue on then, knowing what we are all in store for.

The Trading Card interactive is in its final stage of revision, and the then the last step--once all the functionality is properly placed--is to fill in the test. We're getting close. My hope is to have the questions finished by the end of the week, and the interactive live by the beginning of next week. I'm behind schedule, but we'll be close.

I do have a preview, though, of the final card:

From this snippet of the final (beta) product (and yes, there are some errors there: Wes is not actually a fictional person, despite how much he might sound like one from time to time), you can see one of the cool new features: the ability to add images!

That is a picture of me grilling on my  patio. I think this was taken in response to "How does the steak look?" I was able to upload this picture into the card and save it there. A much-asked-for feature now included!

This is only one of the many new features introduced in the new card creator. The card type is Fictional Person. As you might guess, this means there is a Real Person card as well. There is also a Real Place card and a Fictional Place card. Also, Object, Event, and Abstract Concept.

We've added a way to group up to 8 cards as a collection and save them all as a single set. For example, I could make the Wes card (Real Person), a Grill card (Object), a Patio card (Real Place), a Hunger card (Abstract Concept), and a BBQ card (Event), and save them all as a Memorial Day Weekend collection. In place of writing an essay "What I did for Memorial Day," I could make a collection of cards and turn that in instead!

I think it's a really great improvement over the old interactive. We hope teachers and parents find some interesting and creative uses for the cards--and if so, let us know!

Wes

Character Trading Cards on the redesign block

I was sure I had posted a blog entry at the end of Jan. Like REALLY sure. And yet I don't see it. So I can only assume I didn't...or the Internet ate it.

I'm pretty sure the Internet gets hungry from time to time. Usually it snacks on emails, I think, but sometimes it gets blog posts, too.

And when it is really hungry, whole webpages.

Anyway, I'm posting now, and I'm going to just run with what I had planned rather than worry about what I previously said.

I'm working on the redesign for Character Trading Cards. This one gets a lot of usage, and we really want kids to be able to save their work and keep their cards. Of course, once we start brainstorming, we don't stop with just the save functionality. The project has bloomed!

First, we wanted different graphic options. The current design is really neat and looks great if you print it in color...and only sort of cool if you print in black and white. And of course both methods use a ton of ink! So we wanted a colored design, a black and white design, and a minimalist/economy design. I'd love to have even more options, but there are timeline and budget considerations.

We want to make a Create-Your-Own Card option for teachers to design cards with their own questions, similar to the new Create-Your-Own Cube.

But wait! There's more!

We thought about these cards, and there are a lot more options out there than just characters. The questions are geared towards fictitious characters from stories...but what if I wanted to make a Mom card? Or a Dad card? Or a card for my teacher? (Cause if there is anyone who should be featured on these cards like a hero, it is parents and teachers!) So let's see if we can make a card for Fictional and Real people!

But then it hit me. My 7th and 8th grade English came back in a rush of spectacular knowledge--and for those who know Mrs. Gibbons (Corpus Christi school, Elsmere, DE), you know what that means.

You see, many kids were taught that a noun is a person, place, or thing. I was told that freshman year of high school, and my friend Dave and I looked at each other, laughed, and said "No. A noun is an essential part of speech whose function it is to state person, place, thing, idea, event, or emotion" (I think it was emotion...that last one always got me in English class.)

And verbs aren't action words. "Verbs are essential parts of speech whose function it is to state action, being, or state of being in reference to it's subject. There are three kinds: transitive, intransitive complete, and intransitive link." We would then have to go on to define three, give a sample sentence of each, and diagram the sentence. And that was 1 question on a test, worth 10 points, and woe be you should you miss something in the definition.

Why, yes, I do believe Mrs. Gibbons is part of the reason I became an editor. Why do you ask?

Anyway, back to trading cards. Why limit the cards to people? Why simply have a Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley card when you can also make a Hogwarts card (place), a Quidditch card (event), a Wand card (thing), a Friendship card (idea), and a Love cad (emotion)? Wouldn't that be awesome? To have students make a collection of cards from a single book about setting and plot and themes rather than just characters?

We're working on ways to allow students to save these cards as collections, too, rather just individually, so that students could make a Harry Potter collection with all of their Harry Potter cards. Or maybe a collection for every book, which would show how the characters changed through the series.

Or to give it a real-world bend, students taking a field trip to Washington, D.C. can make cards about some of the monuments they see as well as cards about the historical figures and events those monuments honor.

So that is my current project. Beefing up the old Character Trading Cards interactive and making it simply a Trading Card interactive.

The change in direction on the questions has been the major hold-up. I have design ideas in mind for the new interface, but I need to rewrite all the questions on the card...and that is going to take some time and pondering.

Though I hope when I write my next blog (in two weeks at most!) I will be reporting to you that I have already done it.

Drat! I spent all my time talking about trading cards and didn't mention my other news.

Ah well. I'll just leave this here, and talk about it next time (hopefully next week).



Wes